We are experts, trained to notice the finer shades
of perfection, and until we have seen each new machine put up the clay
hill four miles south of town and have ridden in it over the Q. B. & C.
crossing and the other places which show up bad springs, we can't fix
our minds on our work. Time was when a new baby could come into Homeburg
and hold the attention of the town for a week. Now a baby is lucky if
its birth notice isn't crowded out of the _Democrat_ to make room for
the list of new machines.
As for those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without
responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we
go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood
and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its
compression--half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by
the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment
on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove
that it will pull better uphill with the spark retarded. At night,
during the summer, we hurry through supper and then go out on the front
porch to wait for a chance to act as ballast.
No automobile owner in the dirt roads belt will go out without a full
tonneau if he can help it--makes riding easier--and this means permanent
employment during the evenings for about three hundred friends all
summer long.
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